Great American Adventure Stories

by Tom McCarthy

  Captain Mogul Mackenzie was the last of the pirates to scourge the North Atlantic seaboard. He came from that school of freebooters that was let loose by the American Civil War. With a letter of marque from the Confederate States, he sailed the seas to prey on Yankee shipping. He and his fellow privateers were so thorough in their work of destruction that the Mercantile Marine of the United States was ruined for a generation to come. When the war was over, the defeated South called off her few remaining bloodhounds on the sea. But Mackenzie, who was still at large, had drunk too deeply of the wine of a wild, free life. He did not return to lay down his arms but began on a course of shameless piracy. He lived only a few months under the black flag, until he went down on the Isle of Haut. The events of that brief and thrilling period are unfortunately obscure, with only a ray of light here and there. But the story of his passing is the most weird of all the strange yarns that are spun about the “Island of the Dead.”

  In May 1865, a gruesome discovery was made off the coast of Maine, which sent a chill of fear through all the seaport towns of New England. A whaler bound for New Bedford was coming up Cape Cod one night long after dark. There was no fog, and the lights of approaching vessels could easily be discerned. The man on the lookout felt no uneasiness at his post, when, without any warning of bells or lights, the sharp bow of a brigantine suddenly loomed up, hardly a ship’s length in front.

  “What the blazes are you trying to do?” roared the mate from the bridge, enraged at this unheard-of violation of the right of way. But no voice answered his challenge, and the brigantine went swinging by, with all her sails set to a spanking breeze. She bore directly across the bow of the whaler, which just grazed her stern in passing.

  “There’s something rotten onboard there,” said the mate.

  “Ay,” said the captain, who had come on the bridge. “There’s something rotten there right enough. Swing your helm to port, and get after the devils,” he ordered.

  “Ay, ay, sir!” came the ready response, and the helmsman changed his course to follow the eccentric craft. She was evidently bound on some secret mission, for not otherwise would she thus tear through the darkness before the wind without the flicker of a light.

  The whaler was the swifter of the two ships, and she could soon have overhauled the other, but fearing some treachery, the captain refrained from running her down until daylight. All night long she seemed to be veering her course, attempting to escape from her pursuer. In the morning, off the coast of Maine, she turned her nose directly out to sea. Then a boat was lowered from the whaler and rowed out to intercept the oncoming vessel. When they were directly in her course, they lay on their oars and waited. The brigantine did not veer again but came steadily on, and soon the whalemen were alongside and made themselves fast to a dinghy, which she had in tow. A few minutes of apprehensive waiting followed, and as nothing happened, one of the boldest swung himself up over the tow rope onto the deck. He was followed by the others, and they advanced cautiously with drawn knives and pistols.

  Not a soul was to be seen, and the men, who were brave enough before a charging whale, trembled with fear. The wheel and the lookout were alike deserted, and no sign of life could be discovered anywhere below. In the galley were the embers of a dead fire, and the table in the captain’s cabin was spread out ready for a meal which had never been eaten. On deck everything was spick and span, and not the slightest evidence of a storm or any other disturbance could be found. The theory of a derelict was impossible. Apparently all had been well onboard, and they had been sailing with good weather, when, without any warning, her crew had been suddenly snatched away by some dread power.

  The sailors with one accord agreed that it was the work of a sea serpent. But the mate had no place for the ordinary superstitions of the sea, and he still scoured the hold, expecting at any minute to encounter a dead body or some other evil evidence of foul play. Nothing more, however, was found, and the mate at length had to end his search with the unsatisfactory conclusion that the St. Clare, a brigantine registered from Hartpool with cargo of lime, had been abandoned on the high seas for no apparent reason. Her skipper had taken with him the ship’s papers and had not left a single clue behind.

  A crew was told off to stand by the St. Clare to bring her into port, and the others climbed into the longboat to row back to the whaler.

  “Just see if there is a name on that there dinghy, before we go,” said the mate.

  An exclamation of horror broke from one of the men as he read on the bow of the dinghy the name: Kanawha.

  The faces of all went white with a dire alarm as the facts of the mystery suddenly flashed before them. The Kanawha was the ship in which Captain Mogul Mackenzie had made himself notorious as a privateersman. Everyone had heard her awe-inspiring name, and every Yankee seafaring man prayed that he might never meet her on the seas. After the Alabama was sunk and the Tallahassee was withdrawn, the Kanawha still remained to threaten the shipping of the North. For a long time, her whereabouts had been unknown, and then she was discovered by a Federal gunboat, which gave chase and fired upon her. Without returning fire, she raced in for shelter among the dangerous islands off Cape Sable and was lost in the fog. Rumor had it that she ran on the rocks off that perilous coast and sank with all onboard. As time went by and there was no more sign of the corsair, the rumor was accepted as proven. Men began to spin yarns in the forecastle about Mogul Mackenzie, with an interest that was tinged with its former fear. Skippers were beginning to feel at ease again on the grim waters, when suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, came the awful news of the discovery of the St. Clare.

  Gunboats put off to scour the coastline, and again with fear and trembling, the lookout began to eye suspiciously every new sail coming up on the horizon.

  One afternoon, toward the end of May, a schooner came tearing into Portland harbor, with all her canvas, crowded on, and flying distress signals. Her skipper said that off the island of Campobello he had seen a long, gray sailing ship with auxiliary power sweeping down upon him. As the wind was blowing strong inshore, he had taken to his heels and made for Portland. He was chased all the way, and his pursuer did not drop him until he was just off the harbor bar.

  Many doubted his story, however, saying that no one would dare to chase a peaceful craft so near to a great port in broad daylight. And, again, it was urged that an auxiliary vessel could easily have overhauled the schooner between Campobello and Portland. The fact that the captain of the schooner was as often drunk as sober and that, when he was under the influence of drink, he was given to seeing visions was pointed to as conclusive proof that his yarn was a lie. After the New Bedford whaler came into port with the abandoned St. Clare, it was known beyond doubt that the Kanawha was still a real menace. But nobody cared to admit that Mogul Mackenzie was as bold as the schooner’s report would imply, and hence countless arguments were put forward to allay such fears.

  But a few days later, the fact that the pirates were still haunting their coast was absolutely corroborated. A coastal packet from Boston arrived at Yarmouth with the news that she had not only sighted Kanawha in the distance but they had crossed each other’s paths so near that the name could be discerned beyond question with a spyglass. She was heading up the Bay of Fundy and did not pause or pay any heed to the other ship.

  This news brought with it consternation, and every town and village along the Fundy was ahum with stories and theories about the pirate ship. The interest, instead of being abated, was augmented as the days went by with no further report. In the public houses and along the quays, it was almost the only topic of conversation. The excitement became almost feverish when it was known that several captains, outward bound, had taken with them a supply of rifles and ammunition. The prospect of a fight seemed imminent.

  About a week after the adventure of the Boston packet, Her Majesty’s ship Buzzard appeared off Yarmouth Harbor. The news of the Kanawha had come to the admir
al at Halifax, and he had dispatched the warship to cruise about the troubled coast.

  “That’ll be the end of old Mogul Mackenzie, now that he’s got an English ship on his trail,” averred a Canadian as he sat drinking in the “Yarmouth Light” with a group of seafaring men of various nationalities. “It takes the British jack-tar to put the kibosh on this pirate game. One of them is worth a shipload of Yankees at the business.”

  “Well, don’t you crow too loud now,” replied a Boston skipper. “I reckon that that Nova Scotian booze artist, who ran into Portland the other day scared of his shadow, would not do you fellows much credit.”

  “Yes, but what about your gunboats that have had the job of fixing the Kanawha for the last three years and haven’t done it yet?” The feelings between Canada and the United States were none too good just after the Civil War, and the Canadian was bound not to lose this opportunity for horseplay. “You’re a fine crowd of seadogs, you are, you fellows from the Boston Tea Party. Three years after one little half-drowned rat, and haven’t got him yet. Wouldn’t Sir Francis Drake or Lord Nelson be proud of the record that you long-legged, slab-sided Yankees have made on the sea!”

  “Shut your mouth, you blue-nosed, down-East herring choker!” roared the Yankee skipper. “I reckon we’ve given you traitors that tried to stab us in the back a good enough licking, and if any more of your dirty dogs ever come nosing about down south of Mason and Dixon’s Line, I bet they’ll soon find out what our record is.”

  “Well, you fools can waste your tongue and wind,” said a third man, raising his glass, “but for me here’s good luck to the Buzzard.”

  “So say we all of us,” chimed in the others, and the Yankee and the Canadian drank together to the success of the British ship, forgetting their petty jealousies before a common foe.

  Everywhere the news of the arrival of the British warship was hailed with delight. All seemed to agree that her presence assured the speedy extermination of the pirate crew. But after several days of futile cruising about the coast, her commander, to escape from a coming storm, had to put into St. Mary’s Bay, with the object of his search still eluding his vigilance. He only arrived in time to hear the last chapter of the Kanawha’s tale of horrors.

  The night before, Dominic Lefountain, a farmer living alone at Meteighan, a little village on the French shore, had been awakened from his sleep by the moaning and wailing of a human voice. For days the imminent peril of an assault from the pirates had filled the people of the French coast with forebodings. And now, awakened thus in the dead of night, the lonely Frenchman was well-nigh paralyzed with terror. With his flesh creeping and his eyes wide, he groped for his rifle and waited in the darkness, while ever and anon came those unearthly cries from the beach. Nearly an hour passed before he could gather himself together sufficiently to investigate the cause of the alarm. At last, when the piteous wailing had grown weak and intermittent, the instinct of humanity mastered his fears, and he went forth to give a possible succor to the one in need.

  On the beach, lying prostrate, with the water lapping about his feet, he found a man in the last stage of exhaustion. The blood was flowing from his mouth, and as Dominic turned him over to stanch its flow, he found that his tongue had been cut out and hence the unearthly wailing which had roused him from his sleep. The beach was deserted by this time, and it was too dark to see far out into the bay.

  Dominic carried the unfortunate man to his house and nursed him there for many weeks. He survived his frightful experiences and lived on for twenty years, a pathetic and helpless figure supported by the big-hearted farmers and fishermen of the French shore. Evidently he had known too much for his enemies, and they had sealed his mouth forever. He became known as the “Mysterious Man of Meteighan,” and his deplorable condition was always pointed to as a mute witness of the last villainy of Mogul Mackenzie.

  On the night following the episode of the “Mysterious Man of Meteighan,” a wild and untoward storm swept down the North Atlantic and over the seaboard far and near. In the Bay of Fundy that night, the elements met in their grandest extremes. Tide rips and mountain waves opposed each other with titanic force. All along the bleak and rock-ribbed coast, the boiling waters lay churned into foam. Over the breakwaters the giant combers crashed and soared far up into the troubled sky, while out under the black clouds of the night, the whirlpools and the tempests met. Was ever a night like this before? Those onshore thanked God, and those with fathers on the sea gazed out upon a darkness where no star of hope could shine.

  Now and again through the Stygian gloom, a torrent of sheet lightning rolled down across the heavens, bringing in its wake a moment of terrible light. It was in one of these brief moments of illumination that the wan watchers at Hall’s Harbor discerned a long, gray ship being swept like a specter before the winds toward the Isle of Haut. Until the flash of lightning, the doomed seamen appeared to have been unconscious of their fast-approaching fate, and then, as if suddenly awakened, they sent a long, thin trail of light to wind itself far up into the darkness. Again and again the rockets shot upward from her bow, while above the noises of the tempest came the roar of a gun.

  The people on the shore looked at each other with blanched faces, speechless, helpless. A lifetime by that shore had taught them the utter puniness of the sons of men. Others would have tried to do something with what they thought was their strong arm. But the fishermen knew too well that the Fundy’s arm was stronger. In silence they waited with bated breath while the awful moments passed. Imperturbable they stood there, with their feet in the white foam and their faces in the salt spray, and gazed at the curtain of the night, behind which a tragedy was passing, as dark and dire as any in the annals of the sea.

  Another flash of lightning, and there, dashing upon the iron rocks, was a great ship with all her sails set and a cloud of lurid smoke trailing from her funnel. She was gray-colored, with auxiliary power, and as her lines dawned upon those who saw her in the moment of light, they burst out with one accord, “It’s the Kanawha! It’s the Kanawha!” As if an answer to their sudden cry, another gun roared, and another shower of rockets shot up into the sky, and then all was lost again in the darkness and the voices of the tempest.

  Next morning the winds had gone out with the tide, and when in the afternoon the calm waters had risen, a boat put off from Hall’s Harbor and rowed to the Isle of Haut. For several hours the rocky shores were searched for some traces of the wreck, but not a spar or splinter could be found. All about, the bright waters laughed, with naught but the sunbeams on their bosom, and not a shadow remained from last night’s sorrow on the sea.

  So Mogul Mackenzie, who had lived a life of stress, passed out on the wings of storm. In his end, as always, he baffled pursuit and was sought but could not be found. His sailings on the sea were in secret, and his last port in death was a mystery. But, as has been already related, when the northern lights come down across the haunted island, the distress signals of his pirate crew are still seen shooting up into the night.

  3

  A Lynching in Golden

  By D. J. Cook

  The two men who murdered a beloved Colorado rancher thought they had pulled off the perfect crime. It had been months since they’d escaped, and no one seemed to be on the trail. The Rocky Mountain Detective Agency and the angry citizens of Golden were persistent. They had their own ideas about justice.

  In all the criminal history of Colorado—in all the register of the achievements of the Rocky Mountain Detective Association—the ensanguined pages show no more causeless, unprovoked murder than that of R. B. Hayward in September 1879. The difficulties met and overcome by the detectives and the prompt and tragic end of the criminals lend an additional interest to the case and make it one of the most famous in the far West, as it is most assuredly one of the most noted in Colorado in some of its features. The absence of any material temptation; the temporary escape of the murderers; the
accidental finding of the body of the victim; the patient search of the officers; the final arrest of the men hundreds of miles away; the identification and confession; and then the lynching, so rich in dramatic detail, form a narrative reading more like a sensational romance than the cold facts of an actual reality.

  On the 10th of August, 1879, Gen. D. J. Cook, superintendent of the Rocky Mountain Detective Association, received a dispatch from Sheriff Besey, of Grand County, Colorado, telling him to keep a sharp lookout for a man looking very much like an Asian who was wanted for the robbery of the house of Mr. Frank Byers in Middle Park. The robber had secured a watch and a few trinkets of more or less value and then, helping himself to a mule, had departed for other fields. This robbery had occurred on the 8th, and the intricate machinery of the detectives was put in motion as soon as notified, for Mr. Byers was a well-known citizen, and presently information began to take shape and flow through the properly appointed channels to headquarters.

  It was found that on the 12th, four days after the Byers robbery and two after the detectives had been notified, the robber had appeared in Georgetown and called upon Dr. William A. Burr, giving his name as Joseph F. Seminole and stating that he came from Emerson Kinney of Hot Sulphur Springs, who desired the medical gentleman’s immediate presence, as Mrs. Kinney was dangerously ill.

  “When you get about six miles out of town on the road to Empire,” said the cool and crafty scoundrel, “stop at the ranch of Mr. Lindstrom and get my mule, which I left there. It will be much better for you to use my animal than to ride your own on such a long and hard trip. When you reach the Summit house in Berthoud pass, just present this order, and the proprietor will furnish you with a horse and buggy.”